In the eye of the storm
Niall Breslin hit the wall – both metaphorically and physically – during the recording of The Blizzards’ latest album.
Jason O'Toole, 17 Sep 2008
Suffering mental fatigue, brought on by a litany of setbacks in the studio during the recording of Domino Effect, the singer was convinced the LP was jinxed. When he wasn’t taking his frustration out on the walls, the normally affable singer had to be restrained, as studio disagreements boiled over into a series of stand-offs with veteran producer Michael Beinhorn (of Soundgarden, Hole and Marilyn Manson fame).
So fraught were the recording sessions that Breslin, who goes by the moniker of Brezzie, seriously considered calling it a day.
“I was very close to just saying, ‘Fuck it! Fuck everything! Fuck the contract! Fuck the band!’" he admits. "It really did get that bad. But that showed me how much The Blizzards mean to me.”
From day one, everything seemed to go horribly wrong for the Mullingar group as they set out to record the follow-up to their top ten debut album ,i>A Public Display of Affection.
The Blizzards had booked themselves into Dublin’s Windmill Lane Studios, but after four days Beinhorn declared that he wasn’t satisfied with the drum sound. The band’s manager Moff, a carpenter by trade, volunteered to build a makeshift 'studio-within-a-studio' in Windmill Lane to create the desired ambience. But still to no avail...
“We eventually carried 28 cavity blocks up three flights of stairs to put on the studio floor to see if we could get a more solid drum sound, but no matter what the fuck we did, Michael couldn’t get the sound he was after,” Breslin resumes, with a shake of the head. “Then we went to a couple of other places. We were basically walking around Dublin with a fucking bass drum and pedal, going into the studio, hitting the drum and leaving when Michael decided, ‘No, it’s not going to work in here either.’”
They eventually ended up at Grouse Lodge, the residential studio in Westmeath, whose client list includes Michael Jackson, Bloc Party, Snow Patrol, Editors and Manic Street Preachers.
“After about two minutes there, Michael was going, ‘This is the room where we’re going to do the drums and bass’.”
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